@joe wood said:

Ecuadorian you should correct the spelling to 'buy'.

[attachment=0:4fflanvr]<!-- ia0 -->1 Buy.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:4fflanvr]

Thank you!

A bit of speculation of what could happen...

IF YOU DECIDE TO KEEP YOUR CURRENT PERPETUAL LICENSE:

-You can wait until November 4th to update your M&S plan so you can have every new release until November 4th 2021... But I bet they'll release SketchUp 2022 AFTER November 2021, so you will be stuck with SketchUp 2021.

-The 3D Warehouse will keep updating the file formats of existing models for no other reason than to force people to upgrade SketchUp. Eventually you won't be able to download and open files from the 3D Warehouse. (EDIT: I see they offer a Collada file option, so I might be wrong on this one)

-Developers of plugins and integrated renderers will eventually stop supporting SketchUp 2021.

-Schools will start to think twice about teaching SketchUp, so it will start to lose market share a few years from now.

-The loss of market share means you will need to convert your SketchUp models to other formats before sending them to other professionals.

IF YOU DECIDE TO SWITCH TO A SUBSCRIPTION

-After the first year for $120, you'll find yourself paying $300 a year.

-If you don't use SketchUp every day, you might not the able to justify the expense, stop paying for the subscription, and thus you'll be locked out of decades of your own work.

HOW THIS MIGHT AFFECT ME

I design and sell house plans on my website, http://www.arqui3d.com. I sell both 2D files (PDF, DWG) and SKP files. I tell my buyers that they can open SKP files with the free viewer, but that they need to hire an architect if they want to make changes.

The change to subscription means SketchUp will be less popular in the future and I'll need to provide maybe Collada files together with SKP files. But what worries me is the possibility that renderers such as Lumion and TwinMotion might stop supporting old versions of SketchUp. If they're smart they will keep some way to import SketchUp 2021 files manually for the foreseeable future.

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN
Most users will keep their perpetual licenses. When they start to receive files in incompatible versions, they might eventually add a SketchUp Shop subscription on top of this so they can open newer files. That, or it will become standard practice to always save in older SketchUp versions before sending out files.

Another possibility is that the web-only SketchUp Shop might eventually become the "standard" version most professionals use. Kids these days do everything on the web, anyway, and having your models on the cloud would make it easier to collaborate. However, this would pretty much kill the business of plugin developers.

@slbaumgartner Thank you! It just won't open. I was in a rush, so I just used MacOS's voice recorder and then edited it in my PC. I'll look into it. Thanks!

Thanks, measuredmove.!

With my hardware it took 2 hours to render the initial 4K video clips, but then I re-rendered several clips to solve some problems, such as reflection maps missing parts of the house, or compression artifacts.

My setup:
Windows 10
Core i7 4770
16GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 with 4GB of RAM (old, but good enough to render this video in 4K with TwinMotion. I had to use the lowest quality setting when I was setting up the cameras, though)

Having finished the initial 3D model last Tuesday, I watched tutorials and worked like crazy from Wednesday to Friday to get the initial rendered clips. During the weekend I started to edit, edit, edit and redo several shots to get the desired results. I published the video with my voice on Sunday at 12pm, 1 hour after my initial self-imposed deadline.

Protip: If you want to learn a new software in a few days, publish an update to 30,000 subscribers telling them you're going to publish a new video on Sunday. The pressure will keep you going.

A few weeks ago, I decided to give TwinMotion a try. I binge watched YouTube presentations and tutorials, mostly from Justin's channels: The SketchUp Essentials and The Render Essentials.

Here's my first published video made with TwinMotion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDT_FGj3ECA

I had originally planned to render it with Enscape, but I've had several problems since the release of the 2.6 version.

As for TwinMotion, it has a lot of potential, especially since it's now in the hands of a big Chinese-American company. 前途无量!

However, the importer and the SU plugin are not yet ready for prime time. I had ro re-do a lot of work because re-importing a file feels like spinning a fortune wheel. You never know how materials are going to shuffle around. Maybe your treeline will become a stone wall (yes, this happened to me). So, you must make sure your SU model is 100% finished before importing it to TM.

Now to the user experience: Many things that seem basic to me are hidden deep in the menu structure. Thankfully there's a "breadcrumb" so you can find your way back, Hansel and Gretel-style.

As for movie creation, TM seems to just put a camera on rails at constant speed in the path you create. There seems to be no way to fine-tune how fast or how slow the camera will go in certain parts of the path. This means you either have to 1) create several sub-clips and then join them with the internal editor to get a smooth path, 2) edit speeds in iMovie, or 3) both! I ended up doing both to get the desired results.

As for render speed, TM is by far faster than Lumion and Enscape. Unfortunately, TM sacrifices quality to achieve this: Antialiasing doesn't look good in some places, and the only types of reflections available are static reflection maps and screen space reflections. Also, global illumination does not support artificial lights, only the sun. Hopefully the next version will include RTX support for raytraced reflections and GI.

If you have any questions about TM just ask and I'll try to answer within my (very) limited experience.

I also lost Audacity after the upgrade

Hi! Do you use any online time tracker app to bill your clients, complete with automatic screenshots? I've tried to find one, but all of them seem to be built for organizations, and handle users from the point of view of an organization. What I want to find is one made for freelancers and that allows you to invite your clients log in and see what you've been doing. Thanks.

@bryan k said:

Well done!

How long was the render and animation time?

Hey, Bryan. Thank you! I believe it was rendered overnight. LightUp is blazing fast at 1080p, but it slowed down considerably while rendering 4K. But then again, I'm using an old GTX 770 4GB.

Hi, everyone. After years of being only a Lumion+LightUp guy, I decided to try Enscape after seeing how Pete used it. Enscape still has many rough edges, especially the cumbersome split UI, but I'm liking the results. Here's the video. Comments are welcome.

https://youtu.be/4BUBU27vZPY

Thanks for the recommendation, Pete. I installed the trial and have played with it a bit. It seems to be using some form of heavily optimized photon mapping, right? So far my greatest challenge adapting to it is the fact that you need to work on two separate windows at the same time, or so it seems: You edit materials in the SU Window and see the effect of these changes in the Enscape window. This seems less than ideal when you only have one monitor... Besides that, it seems that they have little documentation for SU users. Justin's videos (The SketchUp essentials) seem to be the best resource so far. I'll keep playing.